What Now?

By Jeff Gogué

He called me out from under the blue plastic roof of my repurposed arts and crafts fair, pop-up tent. I was tattooing for the Vietnam vets motorcycle club run in a Round Table Pizza parking lot in Susanville, California, a few miles away from the maximum-security prison. It was the year 2000 and luckily “Y2K” didn’t take us all out. Blissfully ignorant of my actual situation, I was overconfidently learning to tattoo by practicing on people I should have been way more nervous about. I owned one tattoo machine. I would outline, switch the liner bar for a shader and finish it up. His voice was raspy and loud, “You wanna see a tattoo?” I set my things down and stepped closer as he dropped his jeans to his ankles. The thick chain wallet poked through the worn-out hole in his back pocket, hitting the sidewalk with a thud. He crossed his lean, leathery arms and pulled his seasoned t-shirt over his head, revealing the coolest tattoo I had ever seen. A red dragon wound up from his calf, around his thigh, across his entire back, and over his shoulder onto his chest and arm. No background, just a scaly red monster of a tattoo. I would have no idea if it was actually good. It was over twenty years ago, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was the first licensed and registered tattooer in the history of my county. My town didn’t have a street light or a fast-food chain.

When I started tattooing in 1999, there were five magazines you could buy in stores. Ten years later, there were twice that many. As the publication industry died, for the most part, the final surge had so many mediocre tattoo mags out that it turned my stomach. The constant barrage of "hot chicks" with average tattoos on the covers and celebrity features left me not buying any for the last ten years.

In 2018 I was interviewed in India for a magazine called Nepal Inked. It was late the last night of the Heartwork Tattoo Festival in New Deli. Jet Lagged and tired from the five days of tattooing there; I was surprised by the interviewer's questions. Thoughtful, soulful, deep, intentional questions made me think and feel things about my tattooing that I had never thought or felt, or at the least, I had never shared. I have been interviewed for dozens of feature articles over the years in many countries. They were all pretty much the same. "How did you get into tattooing? Who are your biggest influences? How would you describe your style? "Even in the thick fog of my headspace, this guy from Nepal asking me questions about tattooing made me realize there is depth out there. There do exist people with broader spectrums than just trying to get laid. Of course, tattoos are sexy. So vain, so temporal, so physical. But a much fuller spectrum of experience draws us in before we even realize it is Alice's Wonderland, the Yellow Submarine, Pan's Labyrinth, and the Matrix when we take that step to the place of decision.

I have heard and read that the most spiritual thing you can do is deny your physical desires, the wants, and cravings of your body, hunger, touch, sex, and ownership of things… I have also heard that being present and fully aware of your physical body is the most spiritual thing you can do. Can getting tattooed be a spiritual experience? Can getting tattooed be a spiritual practice?

I have always loved words and their definitions. My mom would constantly tell me to mean what I said and say what I meant as a kid. She would tell me to use the right word to express myself, so I love looking at words and their definitions. The dictionary definition of the word decision is; to sever or cut off. To decide is to sever or cut off all other options. Once you decide something, there’s no going back. Once those needles hit your skin, it is at that point that you cannot return. Yeah, you can change it, get laser removal, cover it, blast over, or whatever else, but you can never again physically be the person you were before that decision. You can never again not have been tattooed.

Our world is increasingly becoming more fabricated, illusional, digital, virtual, and quasi… Quasi is one of my favorite words. Probably because of the definition, which is: “Seemingly, apparently, but not really”… synonyms: supposed, seeming, apparent, alleged, reported, ostensible, purported, nominal, so-called, would-be, pseudo-bogus, sham, phony, imitation, artificial, mock, ersatz, fake, forged, feigned, pretended, simulated, false, spurious, counterfeit, fraudulent, deceptive. Doesn’t that sound like the internet to you? Like social media? So many people create false realities, filtering their lives to look quasi-successful. As a result, their faces look quasi-attractive, younger, slimmer, brighter, less wrinkled, with bigger lips, brighter teeth, prettier eyes, bigger boobs and butts, and the rest…the virtual reality of the digital world.

I read last year that for the first time since the 70s, vinyl records were the number one sold medium for music. People want reality. We want to touch, hold, smell, taste, and feel something real. As we pulse through our days, stroking our screens, scrolling through the endless little windows into other people’s quasi-perfect lives, comparing ourselves to them, our experiences to theirs, the size of our parts to the size of their parts. It should inspire… but it rarely does. That comparison shrinks us like a scared turtle wanting to disappear into its shell.